Prelude
by lead me to salvation
Summary: Cato finds music in an unexpected place, the night before the Hunger Games. Inspired by Chopin's Raindrop Prelude.


**A/N **A little oneshot I came up with. The three songs played are The Raindrop Prelude (Prelude in E Minor) by Chopin, Nocturne No.2, Op.9 by Chopin, and Clair de Lune by Debussy. Please leave reviews, I'd love to hear from you.

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><p><strong>Prelude<strong>

It rained the day she was born. Great teardrops of rain, pounding at the dirty windowpanes of their little shack on the ranch, as her mother twisted and writhed in agony.

Three hours later, her mother was dead, glassy eyes staring into nothingness, and she was squalling, tiny and red faced in her father's large, calloused hands. He wept, for his wife, for his four big, strapping boys and his little girl left without a mother.

Years passed. She grew up, too fast as children always did in Panem, looking around her with wide brown eyes among the freckles obscuring every single part of her face. Only seven years old, and taking care of her four brothers and father, cooking, cleaning, washing and drying. She would meet them at the door with her hands on her hips, glare at them with all the precocity a child of seven years possessed and tell them to wipe their boots and clean their hands before dinner.

Often, it was burnt. No-one minded. They loved her all the same.

When she was nine, and still not working among the animals, the cherry-red cows and the silken-maned horses, the owner of the ranch's wife, Suzie, let her come and play on the battered piano in the sitting room that could have held her family's whole house. She thrived on the music she learnt, she lived and breathed it, hummed when she made dinner (which, now she was older, was slightly less burnt), danced around to it in her tattered and torn nightdress with tummy cramps rumbling in her thin stomach and calluses on her toes from running around barefoot all day.

Then she was twelve, and the first Reaping came along. Her brothers kissed her cheeks, and the two who were still in it held her hands until she had to go and stand with some of the girls she knew from school. Her name was not called that day, nor her brothers'. But they were quiet, on the way home, and for such a long time she could not forget how the blood spattered when the girl was run through with a sword, on the first day of the Hunger Games.

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><p>It rained, the day she was reaped. Sixteen years old, her knees knocking together when the name, "Amber Devon" was echoing around the silent square. Her four older brothers' faces swam in her mind as she mounted the steps, trembling, the rain mingling with the tears on her sun-browned, freckled cheeks.<p>

She did not know the boy next to her, called up to die.

The train was silent, and she hummed to herself, trying to choke back the sobs with a merry waltz, and a nocturne or two, drumming her feet against the side of her bed, her reddish hair falling over her face. It was so unfair. So unfair. She would never even stand a chance. Her mentor knew it. Her escort knew it. Everyone knew it.

She didn't want to die.

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><p>The Tribute Parade was grim, the music was cold, and unforgiving like the expression in the President's eyes.<p>

No-one cared for her, and her partner. Not when District Twelve appeared with flames trailing behind them into the dusk. No-one cared for a scared sixteen-year old and a frightened fourteen-year old with a crippled foot, dressed up like cowboys.

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><p>In Training, she sat, sullen and quiet with her back against one of the platforms of 'The Gauntlet' her knees bent and fiddling with a knife in her hands. What was she supposed to do with it, then? Throw it? Decapitate some dummies, like the tributes from Districts One and Two were doing with such easy, deadly grace?<p>

Her eyes latched onto the boy from District Two, the one slicing through plastic like it was butter, his blade a blur in his hands. He was beautiful, she thought, shaking her head. So different from the boys back home. But as like as not, he would be the one to kill her, to draw a knife across her throat in a shining of silver and toss her aside like a discarded doll, forgotten, useless, unremarkable.

It happened so fast, after that, like a shooting star with its tail blazing across the velvet night. She could not stop watching the boy, devouring him with hungry eyes as he threw spears into dummies from fifty metres, laughed with his partner as she threw knives, glanced over at everyone with such arrogance that it made her breath catch in her throat.

Why was life so cruel?

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><p>The night of the Interviews, she ascended to the roof of the Training Centre, wrapping a woollen blanket around her thin nightgown and stepping into the balmy night air. There was a little conservatory, with the door standing open, windows thrown wide like singing mouths, ivy trailing loving fingers across the glass.<p>

When she stepped inside, the first thing that caught her eyes was the piano, standing there, in one corner and the bench groaning under the weight of books and sheets of music. She gave a cry of delight, ran to it and lifted the lid, playing a note experimentally before the music started to pour from her fingertips, remembrances of happy times spent with Suzie and the light of a crackling fire.

Song after song filled the night around her, and by the time she had played her way through every piece lurking in the back of her memory, her fingers were sore and an ecstatic smile was stretching her face wide.

The sound of clapping.

She whipped around, her loose hair swooshing around her face. "Who's there?"

A shape moved, and then _he _was stepping out of the shadows by the door, blue eyes trained on her face. She froze, heat flooding to her cheeks in waves of embarrassment.

"You're good." He nodded to the piano.

She tried to force herself to speak, to make her tongue form words but all that came out of her mouth was a little choked sound.

He chuckled, folded his arms in a bunching of muscles. "What was that last one?"

She swallowed. "Raindrop Prelude. Chopin."

"Who's Chopin?"

Another blush. "Uh…a composer. He made up the music before…well, before Panem, I guess. Suzie never told me."

He studied her for a few seconds, and she held herself still, stiff under his searching gaze. "Well, I had better go." He turned.

Her fists tightened on the edges of the piano stool, the wood and velvet pressing against her palms. "No!"

The glance over his shoulder was amused.

Her cheeks were on fire. "I…I don't want to be alone. Not…not tonight."

He was still for a second, then turned back to face her, pulling out a chair from a nearby table. "Well, play, then."

She turned back to the piano, hiding her shame beneath curtains of hair. "What do you want to hear?"

"Anything."

She placed her fingers neatly against the polished ivory of the keys, closing her eyes, and taking in a breath, starting to play, swaying a little on the seat as the music claimed her again, loosened the knot in her chest and soothed the red from her cheeks.

He clapped again, when she finished.

"I liked that one."

"Thank you."

She looked at him through her lashes, her heart pounding in her chest. He leaned back in his chair, regarding her through half-closed eyes, thoughtful, pensive. "Why are you up here?" she asked, suddenly, shocked by her own boldness. "Would have thought that you Careers would be fast asleep by now."

"Couldn't sleep," he shrugged. "Clove couldn't either, but I didn't want to watch old Games on the TV with her, so I came here. Glad I did, now."

"Are you frightened?" She couldn't stop, the questions kept spilling over the edge of her tongue.

He shrugged. "A bit."

"I thought Careers were supposed to be fearless."

"Yes. Yes, we are." His eyes bored into hers, shadows behind the clearness of the blue. There was a sudden heaviness to the way he spoke. "I'm not scared of death, or dying, or killing. I've been trained to bring victory home to my district, or to die a glorious death." He raked a hand through his blonde hair. "I'm scared of the pain."

"You wouldn't be human if you weren't."

On an impulse, she reaches out and grasps his large hand in her small one. He leans forward, so their faces were very close. Her pulse was racing in her ears. "What's your name?"

"Amber," she whispered. "Yours?"

"Cato."

"Amber." He almost smiled. "Encore. I demand an encore."

Then he released her, and she sat back her head spinning, her thoughts whirling like a merry-go-round she had once seen on one of the viewing-screens.

She played her gentlest lullaby, then, soft notes that were almost painful in their sweetness, and by the end, Cato was standing by the door again.

As the song finished, she closed her eyes once more. "I'd be indebted if you kill me quickly," she says.

He didn't reply.

When she looked over her shoulder, he is gone.

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><p>It rains the day she dies, great teardrops of rain pounding at the dirty windows of the little shack on the ranch as her father and four brothers sit in a row, watching as their girl is caught around the waist by the monstrous boy from District Two.<p>

Tears fall like pearls down their cheeks, as he draws his knife across her throat in a shining of silver, cutting a wide, red smile, and tosses her aside like a discarded doll, forgotten, useless, unremarkable.

They don't know that the music is falling inside his head, over and over again as the nights turn over into days.

They don't see, that when he dies, in agony from the mutts worrying at his skin, that between his screams, the music is bubbling from his lips, in a last, desperate attempt to comfort himself as his soul slips from between his ribs and out into the air.

They don't hear the music like golden bells when the two finally meet, in a burst of silvery light.


End file.
